One Man's Week By John Nagenda

Elections: How The Masters Do It -- The Labourites have won by a landslide, around 170 clear seats over the rest. Their 43% means less than 25% of voters supported them YOUR columnist, ever mindful of his calling to tell the truth, the whole... etc, etc, climbed aboard his airplane on Wednesday. He struck north to Brussels en route to the United Kingdom, (United?), to arrive there early Thursday, for his independent observation of the General Election of those interesting peoples. He well knew, having sojourned in their midst for a quarter of a century, that although slow to start up, rather like the diesel engine, once fired they would run and run. In this they were not unlike the great African distance runners. Great Britain, another name sometimes applied, accurately or not, to the habitat of the United Kingdomenians, had something else in common with the (very) Dark Continent. It had, towards the fag end of the Second Millenium, manoeuvred itself in a position where nothing would serve but huge and forbidding electoral majorities. (At least they would be considered forbidding if achieved in what was known, with scant regard to arithmetic, as the Third World.) Now here, in the Mother of Democracies, headquartered at Londium (or now more vulgarly known as London) was a toothsome gladiator by name Blair (some said Blare), a Scotsman to boot (as were all his top merry men) intent on bludgeoning the warrior Vague, for a second and more killing time. Now indeed upon this happy hour was it time for those kept for centuries underfoot to arise and see how even the masters did it, and without blushing. Already one of the top English tabloids, The Daily Mail, was reporting fears of wide scale fraud by the ruling Labour regime. How "African" can you get! Your columnist eagerly packed a toothbrush, ditto paste, and reported for duty far away. For what else is the study, and involved sacrifice, of democracy as it must be observed at the cutting edge? "Blah Blair blah, answer echoes dying, dying, dying." * * * There follows,in brief, what your man saw from the seemingly couldn't-care-less city of London. Far better to have been witnessing the elections of, say, the battlefields of Rukungiri, where, in all conscience, all life is warmer! Here, for a start, only 58% of the electorate bothered to vote, the lowest British figure since 1918. In Deputy Premier Prescott's constituency the figure was 46%. The Labourites have won by a landslide, around 170 clear seats over the rest. But their 43% of votes cast means that less than 25% of the eligible voters supported them. On this slender offering Blair's people will rule without any hindrance for the next term of Parliament. Some democracy! Can you imagine what the Donors would tell us if this were Uganda? The good news is that what could become the Third Force in British political life, the Liberal Democrats, did better than going back as far as 1929. Will they galvanise Labour and the Tories into looking less like the twins they appear today? I shall return to these strange political animals. * * * Only a day and a half ago (seems another lifetime) before I left the green, green of Uganda, and the people who are my people, my rapt attention was centred on the Bank of Uganda advertisement concerning the proposed sale of the Uganda Commercial Bank. In similar rich vein, you could say that UCB, if allowed, would prove the red blood of our nation. But will it be given the chance? Any foreign raider seemingly will do, as when the mighty World Bank brought us the Malaysians. Do you recall those? Now the Bank of Uganda has vouchsafed that they will only use a bank which will retain the rural branches. Almost in the words of that eternal song: "If that ain't a promise it'll have to do, until a better thing comes along." But I fear that none of the remaining four banks in the running will stick by the branches which UCB now runs; which are for the good of those mostly rural African Ugandans for whom the Bank was first constituted. These four foreign institutions, whose first call is to their foreign shareholders, will cut and run. And why not? Even as I look out at the monumental grey buildings all around me here in London, which store the wealth of the British Empire, I cannot blame those who want to take advantage of us back in the Little Nations, as they have always done. But what of ourselves, the Little People, as we lay our necks on the ground? Uganda Commercial Bank is still ours today. We saw off the World Bank's Malaysians; not without cost, because we had rushed to our fate like sheep to the slaughter. Cry not for me my country if we give in yet again without any further struggling. And yet we have fought and won for less than this. Ends